Death of Indian Hockey

This has been the talk of Newspapers for the last 2 days and everybody is baying for the blood of KPS Gill. Ya my friend I am talking about the so called “Death” of Indian Hockey in Santiago. Indian team for the first time failed to qualify for the Olympics. The land of Dhyanchand, the person who made Don Bradman wonder if it was the number of goals scored or the number of runs(Mind you he scored 200 goals on a tour), is suffering this embarrassment of not playing in the premier competition of the World hockey. Major Dhyanchand must be turning in his grave at the state of Hockey in India.
I am not an expert to comment on the situation, I don’t have much knowledge of Hockey and the state of game in India, I am a complete cricket buff but things like this must be paining for every Indian. I used to watch Hockey and still remember those few India-Pakistan encounters a few years back.
I was shocked to read that Mr. K. P. S. Gill has been at the helm of Indian Hockey for more than 10 years and still he hasn’t been shown the door after so many blames against him. The game of Cricket is always blamed for the debacle of Hockey but isn’t this the job of Hockey top brass to see to it that Hockey also gets limelight. Hockey team does get the limelight when it performs. I remember the winning team of 1998 Asian Games was given a Hero’s Welcome but it all is lost coz it is very rare that an Indian Hockey Team does perform even satisfactory leave aside exceptional performance. How long can you be attached to a sport where all you see is humiliation and more of it. The cricket team atleast provides some moments of joy and ofcourse there you have “Sachin Tendulkar” the biggest ambassador of the game. Come hockey and its hard to find any player except Major Dhyanchand whom everybody knows. The last captain of India whom I think many people might know must be Dhanraj Pillay after him the icons have just died down it seems. Somebody comes and shines for sometimes and then he fades into oblivion.
What ever little I have followed Hockey it has never made any sense, the administration does whatever it wants without any backlash against them, they are just the masters of Hockey with no one to see to what they are doing. I remember that after the 1998 Asian Games win 6 of the members of the winning team were shown the door for reasons unknown and undisclosed. Now if you do something like this, whats the effect going to be on the performance and support of the game. The result is here to see. Articles in Times Of India today are very good in this respect they tell you that Indian Team wasn’t even provided Astro Turfs in 1976 for practice and even today the condition is that small countries like Holland have about 3 times the Astro turfs then what India has.
I dunno what is gonna happen to Indian Hockey. I just hope that there is no way down from here and it should go only higher and higher.. Hope for the best

Song of The Day – Chupke Se from Saathiya
PS1:- Got screwed up by my advisor today and BTP presentation is in 2 days… What the hell
PS2:- That’s it.. No more PSes today…

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11 thoughts on “Death of Indian Hockey”

Wiki defines a national sport as “a popularly intrinsic part of the culture or is the most popular sport of a country or nation.” Well going by the definition, I feel that hockey no longer deserves to be the national sport of India. Its been 30 years now that cricket has been much more popular, extensively played etc. No doubting the fact that our hockey history is rich, but its now the time to move on. In terms of popularity, talent, achievements- everything, cricket should take over.

Dhyanchand played on grass. he was a master when it came to dribbling. that was india’s strength. they then all of a sudden changed the game and got astro turf. this is now more about power and speed and also money….

@harsh. The problem has been that India hasn’t been able to move to the synthetic surface. Instead of accepting the decision to change from grass to synthetic, they have been cribbing about it for the past 30 years. That doesn’t mean the game is all about “money”

You can’t call it the Death of Indian Hockey. It really doesn’t mean that we are champions if we win one big tournament (like Indian Cricket Team won in Australia) or we are at the bottom of the sea if we lose a big tournament.

Everyone deprecated the Indian Cricket Team when they came out in the first round of the World Cup (despite shelling out so much money) and no one is bothered about it with the T20 and OZ series victory.

In contrary, Nobody appreciated the Hockey Team when the won the Asia Cup and now, everybody are cursing them for not qualifying the Olympics.

I don’t think it is the IHF or the players to be blamed, it’s the eyes which looks at things.

@karan; by money i mean, its takes money to have astro turf. playing on grass is very economical in that sense.
also why was the shift made from grass to astro turf?? was it only to make the sport more exciting? im not cribbing here, neither im defending kps gill, im just making a point that dhyanchand played a different game which has similar rules. it was more about skills then. it is more about power now.

@ karan : Making cricket is one more suggestion which is gonna screw Hockey more badly I guess.. Now atleast ppl think its the national game so lets do sumthing.. Once this tag is gone.. Hockey will be gone for gud..

@ Sachin : Ya seriously man.. Something needs to be done.. Btw how does your photo comes in the comments even though u used a blogger account???

@ Harsh: Dont u think the time has come when we should stop cribbing about astro turf and start making more of them and playing on it.. Its been more than 30 years since it was introduced for the first time..

@ Balaji : One series performance doesn’t say that much about a sport but India hasnt performed for ages and the only victories which come sometime are against Pakistan & South Korea otherwise I havnt seen Indian Hockey team win against any other major team as long as I can rmr and also the general affairs of Hockey. Even now India doesnt have enough Astro turfs, these are the things which are dragging the name and reputation of Indian Hockey down and down…

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